Everyone Has Something to Hide... Don't They? ("Don't Look" thriller REVIEW)
And that means—whether you really want to, or not—getting to know your neighbors (at least a little bit).
But, even if you don’t invite each other over for backyard barbecues or babysit the others’ kids, most people who live that traditional lifestyle tend to see their neighbors enough to make reasonable assumptions about them. Things like, “they’re good people (or not)”, or “she’s really funny but her wife is a total beyotch”, or maybe “wow, they're the best parents, ever, and I’d give anything to be like them”.
Rarely, though—again, just guessing, here—does anyone ever think to themselves, “I bet that guy’s totally a murderer”. [I mean, property values wouldn’t do well with those kinda thoughts, now, would they?]
The protagonists in David Ellis’ latest, Look Closer, however, take that neighborly mindset and put a real spin on it. (Maybe.)
_______________
Simon and Vicky are about to celebrate their tenth anniversary, and while they may be lacking in the children/pets department, they’re otherwise about as respectable as it comes; Simon is a well-liked law professor (who comes from lauded legal stock) at a prestigious Chicago university, and wife Vicky works with abused women at a women’s shelter.
They’re the kind of people who may not mingle often or that closely with other homeowners in their upscale neighborhood, but definitely the sort about whom those neighbors would only have very nice things to say.
The thing is, there’s what people think they know about someone, and then there’s the truth… and sometimes, those are very different animals.
And, with Simon and Vicky, it’s entirely possible that the picture they project to the world isn’t… well, let’s say, the full picture.
It isn’t until a glamorous woman in the tonier neighborhood adjacent to theirs is murdered, though, that anyone has much reason to even think about Simon and Vicky… much less to question those outward appearances.
Yet that’s what happens… slowly, gradually. A dogged detective feels that something is seriously amiss at the crime scene… and she isn’t the type to let her sixth sense about such things go by the wayside.
What skeletons does the law professor have, buried in his past? Like, maybe, the fact that he’d had a fling with the dead woman long, long ago… and that they’d recently reconnected—completely unbeknownst to his wife—again?
But then again, perhaps Vicky isn’t merely the selfless do-gooder, either… and maybe somehow she knows(? or maybe she doesn’t?), about her husband’s illicit affair, and wants to exact a little revenge… and/or get a little piece of her own??
Maybe it’s all nothing… or perhaps it’s all a great big something.
One thing is for sure: no one will know, until everything plays out, just what the stakes are in this particular game of life… or, who will emerge the victor.
_____________
Look Closer is one of those books I would’ve read in one feel swoop, if only I’d had the time. (Instead, I had to space it out over a few days… making those last few pages feel like the best/worst Heinz ketchup ad, ever.)
This is a tale that needs the space to unfold… in soooo many layers. [I picture Christo’s “Running Fence” being unfurled, here.] But why? Because outward appearances can most definitely be deceiving… especially when those portraying said appearances want that to be the case.
Even if you read Look Closer and think you understand, at some point, where things are headed, my advice would be not to get too cocky… because things with Simon and Vicky are, well, not really at all what they appear. [Nor, for that matter, is much of anything in this book.]
And how much do I love that? So very, very much! Sure, there’ve been a handful of other notably-fabulous shockers, out there—Gone Girl would certainly be among the top, for really flipping the script—but Look Closer nonetheless manages to surprise/shock/titillate/completely immerse the reader in a place of “what if” and “but what now”, and I am there for it. Every single little clue, each clever twist, and all the backstory (of which there’s a perfect amount, doled out at just the right moments), kept me hooked… and guessing.
[Also? It was dead-on cool to read something set in areas that were part of my past, mentioning places I’ve lived and/or visited relatives in, way back when. Life doesn’t only happen in huge cities located on the coasts… or in fictional places; it does its thing in real, lesser-known locales, too. So major cudos to Mr. Ellis for giving this book that, as well.]
So, if you want something to keep you guessing—long past the point where you assume you know everything there is to know, here—then this is most definitely the book you need to pick up, next.
Simply put, Look Closer is a diabolically-plotted (and executed) winner.
~GlamKitty
Look Closer will be released on July 5, 2022.
*For many (many) years, I had a very transient lifestyle (although I was married, and did have two furbabies), which meant a ton of moving, across multiple states, and having that whole apartment-living lifestyle… which probably contributed--when I eventually did live in a house (that we owned), for several years--to a rather un-neighborly existence, for the most part. [What can I say? We had zero experience in what that was supposed to be like.]
Comments
Post a Comment
No ads or shilling, please. And always, always be polite.